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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28924788">titrant</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/hellsteeth/pseuds/hellsteeth'>hellsteeth</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>class of '93 [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The X-Files</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - College/University, F/M, Fluff, Implications of smut, mulder is smitten with his scientist girlfriend</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 09:22:58</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,530</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28924788</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/hellsteeth/pseuds/hellsteeth</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Fox Mulder and Dana Scully are both college students and deeply entranced by their studies and by each other. One night, he keeps her company while she works in the chemistry lab and becomes more in love with her with every passing moment.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Fox Mulder/Dana Scully</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>class of '93 [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2128203</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>81</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>titrant</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The physical science building threatens to swallow Mulder in its twisting linoleum belly. He turns another corner, only to be met with more posters and vast walls, both yellowed with time. A glance at his watch tells him that he’s ten minutes late for his meeting with Scully, and he only has an hour and twenty minutes remaining until his study group is supposed to meet in the library. He’d much rather spend his evening with her, but his bi-nightly meetings with Frohike, Langly, and Byers are the only things standing between him and being forced to retake computer science. It’s a circumstance infinitely more tragic than that of Romeo and Juliet in his opinion.</p><p>“<em>There</em> you are, Mulder!” A small figure swathed in a gigantic lab coat pulls him into a chemistry lab. Mulder obliges the arm that hooks around his own and looks down to smile at Scully, hair pulled back into a ponytail and goggles secured tightly around her eyes and the bridge of her straight nose. The plastic of the goggles sits over the round frames of her glasses. She looks adorable, serious, and startlingly brilliant.</p><p>“Excuse me, Doctor Brown? I think you have the wrong guy. I’m looking for Dana Scully.”</p><p>“Doctor Brown?”</p><p>“Like from <em>Back to the Future</em>.”</p><p>Scully rolls her eyes fondly and pulls him closer to the lab bench where she’s set up a mysterious array of glassware. “Very funny. I might be the one doing the science tonight, Mulder, but you are the nerd.”</p><p>“Guilty as charged.”</p><p>The room is empty save both of them and a graduate student who’s reading a textbook in the corner and wearing a bored expression, so Mulder feels safe enough to bend down and kiss his little scientist sweetly on the lips. The tip of his nose clashes with her goggles and she laughs lightly while kissing him back. After a few moments, the student in the back clears her throat and Scully steps away bashfully.</p><p>“Here,” She says, pulling another lab coat and a pair of goggles out of the bench drawer. “Put these on. Just in case.”</p><p>Mulder shrugs into the lab coat and positions the goggles over his nose, where they bite into the bridge uncomfortably. Beside him, Scully checks her notes and then re-checks them before squinting at the tall glass cylinder that sits on the lab bench before her. Mulder has yet to take chemistry, and he’s certainly not planning on taking whatever advanced course Scully is in, so the purpose of this experiment evades him.</p><p>“What are we working on tonight?” He asks conversationally while resting his elbows on the lab bench. There is silence for a few moments while Scully focuses on the work in front of her before she turns to him.</p><p>“It’s just a titration.” She states simply. Mulder raises his eyebrows curiously and Scully continues to explain as she turns back to her work. The words leave her mouth carefully, as if she is deciding whether each one will disturb the sanctity of the chemicals in front of her. “It’s not difficult to do, not really. It’s just a finicky lab exercise. I have a lab practical this Friday and I want to get more practice in before I have to do this for a grade. One wrong move and I’ll have wasted my time.”</p><p>Scully bends at the knee until she’s eye-level with the little contraption at the tip of the glass tube. With the touch of a few delicate fingers, she releases some of the solution in the tube into the beaker below and pauses. Even through the goggles, Mulder can see the telltale crinkle of worry form between her eyebrows. After a few moments, she stands back up and returns to her usual pattern, releasing the solution from the tube slowly while watching it with a cautious eye.</p><p>“What are you watching for?” Mulder whispers, almost afraid to disturb the scene.</p><p>“When it’s done right, the solution in the beaker will change color.” Scully answers simply. “So enough about basic chemistry,” She huffs a loose tuft of orange hair out of her eyes. “How was your day, Mulder?”</p><p>Over the drip of the titration, Mulder tells Scully about his day. He recounts the debate he’d had with a classmate in a history class and the meeting with his advisor in which they’d discussed the feasibility of an honors thesis about crime and the occult. The potential topic of his project had been a hard sell, and he runs a tired hand through his hair as he tells her that his advisor had urged him to choose something simpler. At his frustrated tone, Scully looks up from her work and reaches over to take his hand. She chews on her lip, deep in thought, before offering a few suggestions that he scribbles down for his next meeting.</p><p>Despite the strange setting, the glow of the lights overhead contrasting starkly with the dark interior of the rest of the building and the near silence save for their conversation and the drip of the solution on the lab bench, Mulder feels a sense of calm normality settle over him throughout their conversation. In a flash, he could picture them doing this for years to come, discussing their work and asking each other about their day over a dinner table or next to each other in bed. The thought both warms and shocks him. Only two months have passed since they properly met over a cup of coffee in the student union and he’s already picturing them together decades into the future. He wonders if she ever has similar thoughts about their future and almost hopes she does. The vision of her coming home from working at a university (or a hospital if her offhand remarks about perhaps applying to medical school come to fruition) and having dinner with him, laying down with him at night and making love to him and waking up next to him in the morning- well. It would make him feel like the luckiest bastard on the planet if that idea were to become reality.</p><p>He must have a faraway look on his face because Scully is waving a gloved hand in front of his nose.</p><p>“Earth to Mulder, come in Mulder.”</p><p>He blinks at her and smiles bashfully. “Sorry, I was just thinking.”</p><p>Scully raises a perfect eyebrow and turns back to her work, grinning triumphantly as the solution in the beaker changes color. She squints at the level of liquid in the tube and jots it down. “Thinking about what?”</p><p>Mulder clears his throat. “Come home with me for Thanksgiving break.”</p><p>Scully freezes and looks up from her lab manual. Her pretty lips part slightly in shock. “What?”</p><p>Mulder, also surprised by his request but becoming more in love with the idea with every passing moment, grins and takes one of her hands. “Come home with me for Thanksgiving! I mean it. You’ll make it much more...alive than it usually is, and I’d love to show you around the Vineyard while there are still leaves on the trees.” Scully looks unsure, so he continues. “We can bundle up and take walks by the beach, and my father doesn’t really cook much since the divorce but he still knows how to make a mean turkey and-” He’s rambling, visions of Scully walking hand in hand near crashing waves and sneaking away from his father for sloppy kisses and cigarettes floating tantalizingly through his mind.</p><p>Scully quiets his stream of consciousness with the press of her soft lips against his cheek. “Ok.” She whispers in his ear. Mulder feels his heart twist in surprise and delight and he leans back to grin at her.</p><p>“Yeah?”</p><p>Scully nods and begins to clear off the lab bench, rinsing out glassware and stowing it away in drawers. “But you owe me a coffee for after I tell Ahab I’m not coming home for Thanksgiving this year. And you’re coming home with <em>me</em> for Christmas.”</p><p>Mulder nods. “It’s a deal.” He’ll have to call his own father later to warn him that they’ll be having a guest, someone to help break the awkward silence of two people cast adrift in a storm of buried family pain. He glances at his watch. “Shit! I’m gonna be late for my meeting with the boys.”</p><p>Scully puts away the last of the glassware and takes off his goggles before removing her own. They must have matching goggle imprints on their cheeks and foreheads by now. “Go ahead, I need to finish up a lab report tonight anyways.” She looks up at him, suddenly very alluring and enticing even in her rumpled lab coat and goggle lines. “Why don’t you stop by my dorm room when you’re done?” Her pink tongue darts out to wet her lips and Mulder’s mouth waters.</p><p>Despite a scoff from their supervisor, Mulder kisses her sloppily before running off. The idea of running his tongue up the insides of her soft thighs and burying his head between them later will be more than enough to get him through the rest of the night.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Thanks for reading! Please let me know what you think :)</p><p>find me on tumblr @ midwest-cryptid</p></blockquote></div></div>
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